Full Description
Summary
This is a basic introduction to usability and design fundamentals for absolute beginners. Designing for the web is all about presenting your content so it works best within a relatively fixed environment, such as an HTML/CSS document, and usability is all about making it work well for users who have fairly fixed expectations of how to navigate a website, so they enjoy using your site and stay to use your content.
The goal of this course is to get you thinking about design from the point of view of the audience, not the designer, and not the client. The focus of this class will be on understanding design and introductory usability concepts for people who already have some very basic HTML skills. We will look at what constitutes typical user behavior; eye tracking and how designing to typical behavior means certain layouts are more usable; why contrast, text sizes, type styles, choice of graphic elements, and color choice are important; and a basic overview of what user experience is and why it's important for any page. We will also cover what copyright means to you as a designer and where to get images and content legally, as well as looking at freely available online tools.
We will be using the publicly available work of Vincent Flanders and Jakob Neilsen as our main resources.
The goal of this course is to get you thinking about design from the point of view of the audience, not the designer, and not the client. The focus of this class will be on understanding design and introductory usability concepts for people who already have some very basic HTML skills. We will look at what constitutes typical user behavior; eye tracking and how designing to typical behavior means certain layouts are more usable; why contrast, text sizes, type styles, choice of graphic elements, and color choice are important; and a basic overview of what user experience is and why it's important for any page. We will also cover what copyright means to you as a designer and where to get images and content legally, as well as looking at freely available online tools.
We will be using the publicly available work of Vincent Flanders and Jakob Neilsen as our main resources.
- Web Pages That Suck Vincent Flanders' rather in-your-face site .
- UseIt.com: Jakob Neilsen's publicly available content
- Wikipedia article on Web Usability
- Usability Body of Knowledge
Learning Objectives
- Why design is important on every site
- How web design is different from print design
- The role of graphics, color choices and font styles in user experience
- Eyetracking and user behavior, and what they mean in site design
- Basic information presentation (menus, graphics, main and additional content)
- How to present supplementary content (video, downloadables, interactives, galleries)
- Where to get images legally plus a brief overview of copyright and how it applies to the web
- Tools and resources for the beginner (including online tools like Aviary)
Prerequisites
This class is intended for people who are just learning HTML and just starting out designing for the web. Students should have a working familiarity with the internet as a user, and at least a basic knowledge of HTML. Familiarity with CSS is a plus, but not required.
Class size: the course is set at 15 persons, but the number of seats may be increased if there is sufficient interest.
Class size: the course is set at 15 persons, but the number of seats may be increased if there is sufficient interest.